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Survivors shiver in Turkey's Kurdish
region after quake kills 51 9.3.2010
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March
9, 2010
DIYARBAKIR, Kurdish Southeastern
region of Turkey, — Hundreds of earthquake survivors
huddled in aid tents and around bonfires Monday in
the mainly Kurdish eastern Turkey, seeking relief
from the winter cold after a strong temblor knocked
down stone and mud-brick houses in five villages,
killing 51 people.
The damage appeared worst in the Kurdish village of
Okcular, which was almost razed. At least 15 of the
village's 900 residents were killed, the Elazig
governor's office said, and the air was thick with
dust from crumpled homes and barns.
The pre-dawn earthquake caught many residents as
they slept, shaking the area's poorly made buildings
into piles of rubble. Panicked survivors fled into
the narrow streets of this village perched on a hill
in front of snow-covered mountains, with some people
climbing out of windows to escape. |
Turkish Kurdish villagers search for bodies among
the ruins in Okcular, in the Elazig province (Turkey
Kurdistan). A powerful earthquake has buried
sleeping villagers in eastern Turkey, claiming at
least 51 lives and leaving scores injured, officials
say. AFP Photo |
"I tried to get out of the door but it wouldn't
open. I came out of the window and started helping
my neighbors," Ali Riza Ferhat of Okcular told NTV
television. "We removed six bodies."
The Kandilli seismology center said the
6.0-magnitude quake hit at 4:32 a.m. (0232 GMT, 9
p.m. EST Sunday) near the village of Basyurt in a
remote, sparsely populated area of Elazig province.
The region is 340 miles (550 kilometers) east of
Ankara, the capital.
The U.S. Geological Survey listed the quake at 5.9
magnitude.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Kandilli
Observatory's director, Mustafa Erdik, urged
residents not to enter any damaged homes, warning
they could topple from aftershocks that Erdik said
could last for days.
More than 100 aftershocks measuring up to 5.5
magnitude shook the region on Monday alone.
In addition to the deaths, 34 people were being
treated for injuries, Turkey's crisis center said.
Abdulkerim Sekerdag, 72, said he had just risen for
early morning prayers when the quake hit.
"The jolt threw me onto the ground," he told The
Associated Press. "When I got up I checked my
animals and then I checked on my neighbors."
"Two of them were buried. We pulled them out," he
said, adding that they were alive but injured.
Men used shovels and bare hands to dig two bodies
out from under piles of dirt, rubble and concrete
blocks, video footage showed. Both bodies were
covered in blankets and carried away. One appeared
to be a baby or young child.
Women in veils gathered near the rescue scenes, some
crying.
"Everything has been knocked down, there is not a
stone in place," said Yadin Apaydin, administrator
for the village of Yukari Kanatli, where three died.
Fifteen people were killed in the nearby village of
Yukari Demirci, Gov. Muammer Erol said, while four
each were killed in the villages of Kayalik and
Gocmezler and 10 others died after being taken to a
hospital in the town of Kovancilar.
Most of the dead were immediately buried according
to Muslim traditions. A few funerals had to be put
off until Tuesday.
The temblor also knocked down barns, killing many
farm animals. A half-dozen dead cows were seen
partially buried near one collapsed home. One man,www.ekurd.netHaci
Sekerdag, said he lost eight cows and calves _ his
main livelihood.
The Turkish Red Crescent set up tents and villagers
laid plastic sheeting to shelter them from the cold
and dirt. The government said it rushed ambulance
helicopters, prefabricated homes and mobile kitchens
into the stricken area.
Erdogan blamed the region's mud-brick buildings for
the many deaths and said the government housing
agency would build quake-proof homes in the area.
The quake was also felt in the neighboring provinces
of Tunceli, Bingol and Diyarbakir, where residents
fled to the streets in panic and stayed outdoors.
Schools were closed for two days. In Tunceli
province, the quake caused one school's walls to
crack, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.
A museum in Elazig displaying artifacts from the
Iron-age Kingdom of Urartu was not affected by the
quake, and nearby dams were also intact.
Earthquakes are frequent in Turkey, much of which
lies on top of two main fault lines. In 1999, two
powerful earthquakes struck the country's northwest,
killing about 18,000 people. In 2003, a
6.4-magnitude earthquake killed 177 people in Bingol,
including 84 children whose school dormitory
collapsed.
Monday's quake in eastern Turkey (Northern
Kurdistan) followed deadly recent temblors in Haiti
and Chile, but Bernard Doft, the seismologist for
the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute in
Utrecht, said there was no direct connection between
the three.
"These events are too far apart to be of direct
influence to each other," he said.
Richard Luckett, a seismologist from the British
Geological Survey, said there has not been a spike
in global seismic activity.
"If there was a big increase in the number of
magnitude 6.0s in the past decade we would know it,
because we would see it in the statistics," Luckett
said. "We haven't seen an increase in 7.0s either."
He said scientists often see strong earthquakes but
they don't get reported because the damage or death
toll is minimal. According to USGS data, the world
is hit by about 134 earthquakes a year in the 6.0-
to 6.9-magnitude range _ or about two a week.
"The point is that earthquakes are common and always
have been," he said.
Copyright, respective
author or news agency,
AP | Agencies
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